Woman falls victim to grandparent scam

Thursday

Feb 14, 2013 at 9:01 PM

Lillian Bergeron, 78, is kicking herself for falling for a phone scam that cost her $2,400, but she’s found a way to cope with her anger.

Katie UrbaszewskiStaff Writer

Lillian Bergeron, 78, is kicking herself for falling for a phone scam that cost her $2,400, but she’s found a way to cope with her anger.A few times since she was scammed Wednesday, Bergeron has left voicemails on the scammer’s phone, praying to Jesus to punish those involved, she said laughing.Once, she even spoke with her scammer directly, playing along until the end, even though she knew she wouldn’t get the money back.“Everything will work out,” Bergeron said the scammer told her, pretending to be a public defender working to get her grandson out of jail.“Of course it will, because it wasn’t him,” she said she responded. He sputtered and denied her accusations that everything that had taken place was a farce.“Who told you that it’s a scam? Well, I would certainly like to know who told you that,” he said.“I said, ‘Do you realize how much you hurt me?’ Then, click, he hung up,” Bergeron said.Bergeron, of Houma, fell victim to what the Lafourche Sheriff’s Office is calling the grandparent scam, where scammers pretend to be a grandchild in desperate need of bail money. Their voices sound different because they have a cold or a bad connection, they say. In some cases, these “grandchildren” say they were visiting a foreign country and the money must be wired there. In Bergeron’s case, someone posing as her grandchild said he got into a car accident with a family of foreigners who were visiting the Houma area, and she needed to wire $2,000 to their bank account.“Grandma, do you recognize my voice?” Bergeron recalled him saying. “It’s because I have a cold.” She asked if it was her 22-year-old grandson Kenny, and he said yes.“He told me he was in a little accident, and he said I was the only one he could turn to,” she said.He said he was in jail because he had been driving drunk. When he told Bergeron how much money he needed, he also reassured her his insurance company is going to pay for it, so she’d get her money back in four days, she said.He gave her the number to call, saying it was the public defender who would get him out of jail and keep the DWI off his record.Bergeron called the number 604-396-2520 — a British Columbia area code — and left a voicemail after a message identified the number as “the Public Defender’s Office.” Someone called her back and arranged for her to wire money — a total of $2,400 “because of fees” — to someone named Maria Delma Menacho Mino in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, Bergeron said. She went to Walmart to wire the money and even ran into her daughter at the store.“Mama, that doesn’t sound right,” Bergeron said her daughter told her.But this woman was Kenny’s aunt, not his mother, and she didn’t know whether such a crash had happened. Bergeron sent the money off, which had come from an account left by Kenny’s late father, Bergeron’s son.No one thought to call Kenny or his mother until after the fact, and that’s when she realized it was a scam, Bergeron said. She said she couldn’t believe she had been duped.“The way they did things, it just floored me,” Bergeron said. “I don’t want anyone else to get caught.”The Lafourche Parish Sheriff’s Office has encouraged people to verify such calls in different ways. In these instances, you should contact family members to verify the person in question is actually in jail.Or, ask your caller for as much information about where your relative is being held, and if it’s a legitimate call, you will be able to look up a phone number for the facility and contact officials there on your own.Also, look up the area code of the number to verify it is coming from the country being specified. These scams have been known to originate in Canada, the Sheriff’s Office said.“When there is any doubt whatsoever, before you send any money, contact the Sheriff’s Office to report the call,” Sheriff Craig Webre said. “Remember that no matter what you agree to during the conversation, you should always protect yourself by verifying all information prior to sending any money.”Bergeron said she feels “stupid” she fell for the scam, but she wants to tell her story so no one else falls victim.“Maybe it’ll give some other people an idea what (these scam artists) do, and maybe they won’t be as stupid and as dumb as I was,” she said.Bergeron said her family has been supportive since she fell for the call. When she told her husband what had happened, he was reassuring.“Well, we live and we learn, don’t we?” she said he told her.

Staff Writer Katie Urbaszewski can be reached at 448-7617 or katie.urbaszewski@dailycomet.com.